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Portland restaurants are increasingly adding a mobile component to their businesses to compete with food carts.

Restaurants such as Ellen Green's bike-powered Superdog are adding mobile carts that can travel to local events.

“I saw that the cart businesses were doing really well so I thought it must be a good idea,” she says.

Applying her electrical engineering background, Green devised a tricycle cart with the help of her husband, also an engineer, and the SuperDogExpress was born. Because she had the locations to prepare food in advance, Green’s main goal was to create an efficient way to keep the hot dogs warm as well as store condiments and napkins. A car battery powers a small commercial oven that holds 50-60 hotdogs, and a hand built box attached alongside organizes everything else.

In the past year, sales have increased approximately ten percent with five percent of total sales coming from the cart. Although Green can’t say for sure that the mobile unit is behind the growth, she suspects that it plays a major part. “This is the best marketing idea I’ve seen,” says Green.